


Juno Steel and the Prince of Polaris Park

by iimpavid



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Benzaiten Steel Lives, Friendship Is The Best Ship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Other, Separated at Birth, The Prince and the Pauper AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-14 23:14:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21023816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: The one where Sarah left one of her boys at an orphanage.





	Juno Steel and the Prince of Polaris Park

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voidteatime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidteatime/gifts).

> Voidteatime asked for a "Prince and the Pauper" AU and this is what happened. Now, I really don't like Mark Twin but let's see where this goes. Nobody's beta'd this so be gentle with me.
> 
> Important authorial disclaimer: I do actually know how American childrens' services work but we're talking about Mars 8,000 years in the future in a society that is dramatically stratified by class so I figured I'd get to screw around with it a bit.

Juno has a last name, somewhere, maybe on the birth certificate that no one’s ever been able to find, but the point is he never learned to sign it in cursive. Not that that mattered anyway because every job he’d aimed for after junior high was content to accept his chicken scratch and was under the table anyway -- the lack of identifying documents was something of a barrier to gainful employment and being considered a legal human being. That kind of work no one got more specific than “hey you!” busing tables or “get a job!” washing windshields or “hands up!” getting run off a squat. The point is his name’s Juno and no one ever bothers to use it anyway so it doesn’t mean a damn thing. 

“Jay! Hey, Jayjay!” 

Except for Mick Mercury. Juno had no idea what Mick did with his time, how he paid to keep his hovercycle running on more than fumes and hope, or why he kept coming around.

“Hey, _ Juno _!” Mick wasn’t going away and, apparently, he was serious about something.

Juno stifled the urge to groan. Listened to the hovercycle cycle down and Mick launch himself off it, jogging to catch up with him.

“Don’t, don’t even start--” He veered to the side in a half-hearted attempt to dodge the mountain in motion that was Mick Mercury going in for a side hug. 

He failed. 

Mick slung a heavy arm around his shoulders, jostling him so hard he’d be surprised if he _ didn’t _have whiplash.

“Leave me alone, Mick, I’m not in the mood.” 

It was the best he could do for a warning. Ever since nice Mrs. Unger had taken him home with designs on adopting him only to send him back for breaking one of her stupid crystal cats (they were ugly, alright, and it was that or put his head through a wall because there’s only so many times one person can fail algebra before it starts to get really frustrating) he found everyone’s Juno Steel Threshold eventually. His first three caseworkers’ had been “belligerence”, “noncompliance”, and “bad attitude”, respectively. Mick’s parents’ had come the summer he ran away from the Yama family and lived, secretly, in Mick’s bedroom for 11 weeks straight. In fairness, he had smelled pretty awful so he couldn’t blame them too much for sending him straight back to Radiant Futures.

“No can do, Jayjay, I need your help.” 

He hadn’t found Mick’s Threshold yet. Probably on account of Mick getting hit over the head too many times. 

But stopped between the stitches of the pavement attempting to hold up the hulk of Mick Mercury’s over-affectionate enthusiasm was not how he wanted to spend the afternoon. Not when Rio Canal Restaurante had fired him (it boggled the mind, how they could fire somebody who they’d never really hired in the first place) a week out from Martian Children’s Services officially giving him the boot.

“That’s great. I don’t wanna help you, Mick.” 

“Okay, fine: _ I _ don’t need your help but there’s some folks broke down over on Cygna Drive? _ They _ need help and _ I _ need someone to make sure nobody makes off with Delilah. The Dukes’ve been stripping everything for parts lately, it’s weird. Not just cars, people, too.” 

Juno raised an eyebrow and looked behind Mick, pulling a face, “You mean like that guy is right now?” 

It was almost worth getting slapped in the face by Mick’s locs to see the look of abject horror on his face, like the concrete had dropped from underneath his scuffed boots. 

The hovercycle sat where he’d left it, of course, parked on the curb a few yards behind them. 

Juno snorted. “You have _ got _ to stop being so gullible, Mick, it’s gonna bite you in the ass one of these days.” 

Mick laughed along, “Yeah, I guess. C’mon, though, we can’t just leave ‘em stranded.” 

““We”?” He scoffed, “_ No _ .” He shrugged out from under Mick’s arm. “What am I even supposed to do if the Dukes show up? It’s probably a trafficking ring anyway, Mick, the second you knock on the window to see if you can help, you’re gonna get stabbed and shoved into their trunk. Or they do need help so they’re waiting for a tow truck and you’re gonna get the cops called on you and the cops’ll shoot you instead and shove you into _ their _ trunk and you’ll be another body in the canal picked apart by peepers.” Point made, Juno turned on his heel and started to walk away.

“Okay, but what if you’re wrong?” 

He couldn’t help it: “I’m not wrong.” 

“You don’t know that.” Before Juno could get started on more reasons he was pretty sure he was right, Mick moved to stand in front of him again. “_ And _ if you’re right, I’m going back anyway-- what’re you gonna do if I get sent to a body shop? I’m your best friend!” 

“I dunno, sleep soundly for the first time in my life?”

They both flinched a little at that.

Juno rolled his eyes, “God, okay, _ fine _. Let’s go get murdered.” He slouched back toward Mick’s bike.

* * *

If it was a chop shop operation, it was high end. Umbra 36x’s weren’t cheap and semi-iridescent paint jobs cost extra. Sat in the middle of Cygna the luxury car was starting to draw attention from more than the boarded-up windows of the abandoned housing development and grocery complex: five Dukes slouched on the far side of the street, watching. 

“This is a bad idea,” Juno said in an undertone as they pulled up.

“They just screwed up a few conductors, it’ll take me five minutes.” 

“We don’t have five minutes.”

This did nothing to stop Mick dismounting-- awkward, hiking one long leg up like a crane because Juno refused to get off the back-- and rummaging for three minutes in the saddlebag nearest him. There was no system of organization to any facet of Mick’s life that Juno had been able to figure out but he was guaranteed to always have spare parts on hand. Not necessary anything his hovercycle ever needed, either. It was baffling.

Mick came up with what he needed, smiling. “So keep the engine running; you remember how to drive her, right?” 

“I know where the throttle is.” 

“That’s all you need.” 

Feeling sick, Juno slid from pillion to front, a little graceless to keep his bare ankle away from the scalding tailpipe. He watched the Dukes and tried to look … bigger. Unafraid. Despite the tense line of his shoulders, being balanced on the balls of his feet and primed to up the kickstand the second one of them stepped into the street. He managed to be about as impressive as a sewer rabbit.

To his left, he heard a window roll down. The Dukes took notice, too, perking up. Juno’s stomach dropped. 

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. You needed help, so we helped, that’s all--” That was Mick. Turning down what was probably the best money he was gonna see that week for no good reason.

“Just take the damn money, Mick, let’s get outta here!” Juno turned to glare at him.

The driver was a woman, half leaned out the window to stretch a few bills, not small ones, toward Mick, between her ink-stained fingers. She turned when Juno snapped, Making eye contact with him the color drained from her face, leaving it the color of ash. She dropped the money. Mick squatted to pick it up-- and tried_ to give it back. _ Juno would have said something, how it was dumb to look a gift horse in the freakin’ mouth, but he heard boots hit pavement to his right as the woman slammed the car in gear, fumbling for the window control at the same time, clumsy and frantic. 

From the passenger seat: “Mom, what’s wrong?” 

“Nothing, Ben, don’t look at them.” 

Except the kid did look and Juno looked right back. At himself, an expression of confusion and surprise lighting the same blue eyes and cheekbones and hairline-gapped front teeth--

“Juno?” Mick all but threw himself into the pillion seat, screwing up Juno’s balance, “I think we should go!” He was looking at the Dukes and at least one of them, Juno would bet, had a gun. 

Hopefully, they weren’t a good shot. The last thing he wanted to do, despite everything, was get killed over a yuppie with an ugly, overpriced car. 

Somehow he kept them upright, kicked the hovercycle into gear, and with no small amount of precarious weaving, got them off Cygna Drive so fast the bike left ozone burns on the asphalt.

* * *

Radiant Futures Communal Orphanage was a philanthropic effort that aimed to be like a communal garden but for kids: everyone put something in, which meant everyone stood to lose or gain something, so everyone was invested in keeping it nice and sharing the fruits of their labor. Except the only thing anyone ever put in was kids they didn’t want or couldn’t afford and a long series of sob stories about bills or reputations or tragedy. 

Spend enough time dumping the dregs of last night’s bender into a garden bed nothing that grows there’s gonna taste very good if it manages to survive. The metaphor breaks down pretty fast but it gets the point across.

Juno didn’t do much but sleep there-- and not even that if he could help it-- but he had to turn up every couple days to check in and prove he wasn’t spending all those days away shooting up and being a greater burden on society. The last week was the worst for it; there were _meetings_. Waivers about something related to taxes that he didn’t care about in the slightest. A wrap up with his case manager, a neatly sealed envelope with a list of resources to pair him up with affordable housing (the waitlist was still 2 years out), a job, a map of libraries and soup kitchens, and his birth certificate (that theoretically existed but two case managers ago he’d been told no one had ever seen) and free government ID card. 

His caseworker’s name, he was pretty sure, was Emelia. He’d met her once, on his way out of the orphanage after dropping in for mandatory drug testing and a shower last month. She sat at the communal desk and fixed him with a beaming smile that almost erased the exhaustion from her eyes. “Jona! How good to see you!” 

“My name’s Juno.” 

She didn’t wilt so much as she solidified. “I might know that if you’d come to any of our meetings.” 

“Nice guilt trip. Does that work on all the kids?” 

“Most of them.” 

“Right.” He walked over and grabbed the envelope with his name on it from in front of her. “This’s got everything I need, right?”

“Juno, why don’t you have a seat for a few minutes.” 

“Why? I’m 18. You can’t stop me; in fact, and correct me if I’m wrong, I’m pretty sure it’s your job to kick me out.” To make a point he walked over to the mostly-empty duffel bag, _ his _ mostly-empty duffel bag, beside the desk. They must have needed his bed for someone else because it’d been there a while, stacked with a few binders and gathering dust. Not that there was much of value in it: a pair of shoes that were half a size too small, a windbreaker, toothpaste, a couple sets of clothes, a Turbo doll he’d been dropped at the orphanage with. “See you around.” 

Between the third floor office and the front door, he entertains the thought of putting his birth certificate and library card to good use, seeing if some polite librarian will sit down with a computer illiterate kid and help him find out where he really came from. 

But then, because the universe has a sense of humor, he trips over Mick sitting on the stoop.

From the sidewalk, once he’s sure nothing’s broken and only his lip is bleeding where the impact with the sidewalk made him bite it: “What the hell, Mick? Why are you here?” 

“Aw, jeez, sorry Juno--” 

Mick’s amassed a collection of the kids, Amber and Randy and Oliver, and they look from Juno to Mick and back again, wide-eyed. Oliver stands up, chin raised like he’s defying someone important. “Don’t be mad; he’s just telling us about Uptown!”

“Oh, _ is he _?” He fixed Mick with an accusatory glare. “If you listen to everything every schmuck on the street tells you you’re gonna be rabbit chow. Scram! This guy’s a bad influence and so am I. Go see if Tia’s put on dinner yet.” 

They don’t scram but they do file back inside. Reluctantly. Mick waves at them as they go, “See you later, guys.”

“What’re you doin’ lyin’ to the kids, Mick-- they don’t deserve -- what’re you even doing here?” 

With the full force of the damn sun, Mick smiled. “You need a place to live and I need a roommate.” He fished a set of keys out of his pocket and dangled them at Juno. They glinted in the afternoon sun.

“You need a job to sign a lease.” 

“I have a job.” 

“Good for you, Mick, but _ I _don’t.” 

“Not yet, but I can get you an interview, and it’s not like it’s anything that needs a lot of skills so you’re guaranteed to get it.” 

“_Thanks._ What makes you think I wanna work with you?” 

“Uh, I dunno, maybe ‘cause I’m awesome?”

“What makes you think I wanna _ live _ with you?” 

“There’s a sandstorm in the forecast for tomorrow.” 

“Aw, f-- are you kidding me?”

He shook his head. He didn’t look particularly sorry.

“Fine. But just for tonight.” 

“Just for tonight, I swear, no pressure.” 

Which is how Juno goes from homeless to splitting a one-bedroom in the Hangar District with Mick. It’s walls are paper thin but the landlord’s cat is the quickest thing on six legs and can swallow rats whole. There’s a refreshing lack of trash grizzlies in the area, too. Juno gets the bedroom, Mick’s bedroom is the living room, and they trade off who cleans the bathroom. 

The first weekend, when the sandstorm settles, they drag a washer and dryer all the way from the dump to the empty wall of the kitchen with hookups. Mick covers the kitchen floor in newspaper and spends a month trying to repair them-- in the meantime they wash their underwear in the bathtub and make do and, eventually, to Juno’s eternal shock (and grudging delight) Mick gets it right. The washer gets off balance if one of them isn’t sitting on it and the dryer screams the last ten minutes of any given cycle but their neighbors make more noise anyway. The important thing is they have clean clothes.

And clean clothes mean Juno’s as fit as he’s gonna get for a job interview at Polaris Park. To be a custodian. 

The epitome of his most fantastical childhood aspirations.

* * *

_Polaris Park._

It’s ridiculous. It’s a gimmick. He’s only seen it in pictures and in person? It’s exactly the same. It smells like sugar and cinnamon and not at all like dust. How they keep the film of red from settling over every single gleaming white surface is beyond him. They must have a legion of people going around with microfiber rags to dust off the benches and fences and weirdly-scaled fake castles--

A legion of janitors. Of which he is a member. Because he got the job. 

He has to cut his hair off and pierce his other ear and find the money for a new pair of shoes because the soles are worn out of his. Walking 10 miles a day back and forth picking up rich peoples’ trash has him limping the first 8 hours. But they _ give _ him the pristine polos and nametags and khakis he has to wear every day and he gets to eat all the hot dogs he wants. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

* * *

Two months in and Juno catches Mick boggling at him in the locker room. “Take a picture, Mick-- actually, don’t, HR’d have a rabbit. What’s your problem?” 

“... Did you get taller?” 

“... No?” 

“Yeah… _ yeah _, I think you’re getting taller. That or you shrunk your uniform.” 

Juno frowned. Looked down at himself. His khakis were almost an inch too short for his leg. “_ Shit _.” 

“My mom can take the hem out for you.” 

“Your mom hates my guts.” 

“No, she doesn’t, Juno, she just… she didn’t understand. She does _ now _; she feels bad. Back then she had no idea and you’re not exactly talkative.” 

“Is _ that _ why she keeps sending you money for real milk that you don’t drink?” 

Mick looked uncomfortable. “Maybe?” 

“I don’t need your mom to take care of me. She can barely handle you.” 

“But it’s good for you-- you’re getting taller!” 

“I swear to god, I’m gonna move out. This weekend. It’s happening.” 

Juno didn’t move out. But he learned to let out his own damn khakis even if he did stab his fingers into ground beef figuring out how to sew new hems on them. He only kept drinking the certified real milk Mick brought home once a week in his cereal because it tasted better than the mass-generated stuff. And he keeps working his ridiculous job at Polaris Park, too, despite the ridiculous hours with ridiculous rules about how to point (two fingers or the whole hand) and when to smile (always) and his ridiculous nametag telling the world that he’s _ Juno from Hyperion City _. 

It was kind of nice, though, getting to be part of the background in The Place Fun Calls Home™. 

The littlest kids lit up like meteorites when they saw Andromeda in the flesh strolling around in her chain mail and walking aura of valor. (Sure, Juno had seen “Andromeda” turn up in the break room with her arms full of free iced coffee and announce, “Let’s feast bitches!” but that, to him, only made her more magical.) After about 4 p.m. every kid under 8 decided, as a collective, that strollers were lava and they started climbing everyone and everything in an attempt to get free. Get free to do what? Scream, mostly. 

Juno could relate.

Once, a kid asked him about a plaster skull off the side of the winding line to Dragon’s Den. No one ever talked to him. So of course he crouched down and told them the whole story of what it was and how it got there: deep in Andromeda’s past she had a truly wicked enemy, a lich with dark matter bending powers, and she’d defeated him by the skin of her teeth. The only way to keep him from coming back was to keep his skull separated from his decrepit, oozy skeleton. So they kept it safe in Polaris Park, where all their guests could help keep an eye on it, right outside the Dragon’s Den. Of course, she’d stood there enraptured while he spun the flagrant lie from the edge of his sleeve-- and later Frankie, the Dragon’s Den attendant, told Juno all about this one kid who’d refused to get on the ride with her family, had thrown a tantrum that nearly necessitated security being called, because _ she had to watch the lich _.

Yeah, Juno’s job was kind of nice.

* * *

He stood as hidden as he could get behind Turbo statue, trash picker tucked under his arm while he did his best to inhale a corndog. He was hungry all the time-- he had been for as long as he could remember, really-- and this was the first time he also had food _ all the time _. He wasn’t supposed to eat on shift but it was this or he was gonna tell the next person to crack a joke about “how fun it must be to get to play at a theme park all day for a job” exactly how stupid he thought they were.

“Excuse me? Do you have a second?” 

In lieu of smiling and delivering a peppy, “Of course, how may I help you?” Juno tried to _ actually _inhale his corndog.

It went badly.

Hacking and gagging, he squeaked out, “I’m sorry.”

“Oh god, _ I’m _ sorry, I’m so sorry-- are you okay?”

“Fine! I’m fine!” There wasn’t ketchup or macerated corndog remains on his clothes or the guest’s or the pavement, thanks to a convenient planter, so all things considered he could be doing _ a lot worse _. 

“Wha’d’ya want? I mean-- how may I help you?” He tried to smile around the urge to cough-- and had to hold his breath when he got a good look at who was talking to him: himself. It wasn’t himself, obviously. But it was a damn good likeness. He frowned. “You’re that kid from Cygna Drive.”

He nodded, smiling like Juno handed him a million creds. “My name’s Ben. Benzaiten, I guess, but Ben. It’s nice to meet you, Juno.” 

“How do you know my name?” 

Ben raised an eyebrow, “You’re wearing a nametag.” He pointed at it, just in case Juno missed it.

“Oh! Right! Right. It’s... nice to meet you, too?” 

“You look just like me.” 

“Uh… Yeah?” 

“It’s really cool! And I didn’t get a chance to thank your friend--” 

“Oh, Mick? Don’t. He can’t help himself--” 

“-- But I guess it makes sense that mom kind of freaked out. I’d freak out if my kid suddenly had a doppelganger.”

A nervous laugh creaked out of Juno. “Yeah, I guess. There’s a theory we all have one out there in the universe somewhere.” He was distantly envious of Ben’s linen sundress; it looked like it cost more than he made in a month and about seventy times more comfortable than his polo and khakis for Polaris Park in the middle of summer. 

Apropos of nothing, looking like he was seizing an opportunity by the hair, Ben asked, “What’s it like in Hyperion City? Other than the crime,” he added, hastily, “and the reality streams.” 

Juno glanced around, hoping desperately for his shift supervisor to appear from nowhere smiling like they were gonna rip his arm off to send him to scrub toilets. 

He had no such luck.

“It’s a city. It smells like hot garbage and rust and people die all the time and _ don’t _ make the news for it.” _ You’re onstage whenever a guest can see you _ ; his Polaris Park Hospitality Training Manual reminded him. He’d read it cover to cover and memorized the damn thing and it hadn’t done him any good to date. Still, he tried to backtrack, “I mean. A lot of people say it’s the most beautiful place in the galaxy? And it’s… it’s just home. _ I don’t know _ \-- why don’t _ you _ tell me what’s it like to actually get to visit Polaris Park?” 

Ben frowned. “You’ve … never been here?” 

“I can’t afford it,” he deadpanned.

That, for some awful reason, didn’t make Ben go away either. 

“This place sucks,” he replied and reduced Juno to owlish blinking with three simple words. Oblivious, Ben went on, obviously annoyed with the entire franchise: “Even if you don’t think about how we’ve bought half the streams on the air we still import all the souvenirs and half the food cheap from Venus so we can mark up the prices tenfold and then don’t pay any of the staff. Even the face actors-- you _ know _ that, obviously, but--” He paused, visibly leafed through his outburst and back pedaled-- “I mean. It’s clean? Really clean. And we care a lot about keeping people who come here happy, which has gotta be nice if you’re not used to it, I guess?” 

Juno snorted. “You sound like you work here.”

“Me? No! _ No _, no. But my mom she’s, uh, she does. Sort of.” 

“_ Right _. And you’re here a lot?” 

“Unfortunately. I’d really rather not be but, uh, I kind of have to show up for major investor events and stuff.” 

All at once, pieces slotted into place. “You’re Benzaiten Steel.” 

He winced and gave Juno a small wave. “Hi.”

“Your mom is Sarah Steel.” Sarah Steel, who wrote _ Andromeda Chainmail Warrior _, which more or less informed Juno’s entire childhood. When he lived with families who had cable, anyway. 

“Yes?” 

“Okay, cool.” He sidestepped and almost tripped over the planeter he’d horked his poor corndog into. At least he wasn’t hungry anymore. “If there’s, uh, nothing I can do for you? I’m gonna get back to work. I’m technically on the clock right now.” 

“Please don’t!” 

There was nothing in the Polaris Park Hospitality Training Manual about whether employees were allowed to run away from guests. 

“Just, wait. This is gonna sound crazy-- it _ is _crazy but hear me out okay? Trade me places? For, like, a few hours. After you get off work. You’re not night crew, right?” 

“You’re Sarah Steel’s kid. You can’t just go wherever you want?”

“Nope.” 

“You’re right, this does sound crazy.” 

“I have bodyguards. They watch me. All the time! I’m _ 18 _ and I’m not allowed to get a job and if I move out the Northstar surveillance just comes with me! They want to make me going to college into a reality stream! I can’t do that!” Ben paused, realized he was shouting, starting to gesticulate, and took a deep breath to rein himself in. “I really, really just want a break.”

“You don’t know me.” 

“I feel like I do.” 

“Still sounding crazy.”

“Yeah, I know. Look, you’d basically have unlimited money and no one would be asking you to find a way to clean some kid’s vomit off the side of a roller coaster car.” 

“We have power washers for that.” 

“But you get what I mean!” 

“What if I steal your identity? What if I blow your entire trust fund? What if I kill someone, pretending to be you?” 

“I dunno, are you actually gonna _ do _ any of those things?” 

“Of course n--”

“--I knew you wouldn’t--”

“That’s not the point! You don’t know me! Have you thought through this at all? I mean, the actual logistics of it, not just daydreaming about being free from the hardships of being rich?” 

“Kinda?” 

Juno scrubbed his hands over his face. Took a deep breath. Thought really hard, for just a second, about money. And when he was good and calm he said, “Okay, well you didn’t think about it enough. There are cameras there, there, there, and there--” He pointed to them all without looking-- “And people saw you come talk to me. They’re looking at us now. In case you didn’t notice, we’re kind of making a scene and this is the kind of thing people remember because it breaks the narrative of the _ Polaris Experience _.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah, _oh._ So here’s what you’re gonna do: you’re gonna go over to the Guest Services Booth and ask my manager, her name’s Yvette, if _ that guy picking up trash _ is okay. Don’t use my name. You don’t know me. You’re gonna tell her I’m bitching at everyone and that I threw up. She’s gonna write me up and send me home for coming to work hungover.” 

“I don’t want you to get in trouble--” 

“_I’m not done._ Once you do that, you’re gonna go back to doing whatever it is you do here, get an icee, get a picture with Ian Ion,_whatever._ And in 25 minutes you’re gonna meet me at the Northeast actors’ lounge. Do you know how to get there? _ Can _ you get in there?” 

Ben pulled a card key from his pocket. “I can get in most places and I’m doing a research project on the history of the park for a class, so I have a reason to be snooping around. See? I thought about it.” 

“Uh-huh, you get a gold star, Benten, good job. Now go tell my boss I’m bad at my job.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, y'all should know by now that I'm a chronic project-starter, not a project-finisher. That said, this might actually go somewhere...
> 
> In the meantime: your comments give me life.


End file.
